There Was A Season

A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep

Baseball gives you what came before, what’s going on and what will come next. Life does that, too, I suppose, but as Casey Stengel might have put it to a Congressional subcommittee, I am not here to argue about other states of being, I am in a baseball state of mind. To reside there as resolutely as I do, I have to be able to glide gracefully among what came before, what’s going on and what will come next.

Baseball seasons are ideal for navigating such an existential three-division format, even a baseball season as unideal as that just completed by the New York Mets of 2017, who finished 70-92, 27 games from first place in their division and 17 games from a playoff spot in their league. Perhaps it would be more polite to refer to the Mets as having finished, period.

But I like knowing and remembering every season’s final record. I know and have remembered every final record from each of the Mets’ now 56 seasons (including both halves and the composite if contextually meaningless total from the 1981 split season). A season’s record amounts to its name, rank and serial number. If you can’t tell anything else about a season, you should be able to identify it by its wins, its losses and its standing. In less militaristic terms, consider those vital stats the bus pass pinned to your first grader’s windbreaker to make sure the season can find its way home should it go wandering off god knows where. In the Mets’ case, anybody squinting to make out 70-92 would know to inform the driver to drop these children off in fourth place where they belong.

Incidentally, the 2017 Mets’ mark was precedented in franchise history. Seventy and Ninety-Two was also cobbled together in 2009, a season mostly recalled for a strange new stadium and a bizarre rash of injuries. Eight years later, the stadium seems neither strange nor new. The rash, though, is hauntingly familiar.

This year’s record was recorded steadily. After the briefest prelude of promise, the numbers got bad, then worse, then declined steeply. We were never in it in 2017. We never close to in it. “It,” if you’re not clear, is what we were in the previous two seasons. We were in it in 2015 and 2016, we emerged brilliantly from it and, after those years’ 162 games were complete, we weren’t being terribly reflective about it because we had games to anticipate ASAP. One game last year. A whole bunch the year before.

Gads, that was fun. That was fun we hadn’t had in the strange new stadium when the stadium was still strange and new. It was so much fun that it allowed me to allow the Mets some slack this year…a year that was basically no fun. Yes, 2017 Humpty Dumptyed early, and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men definitely seemed more focused on selling off the pieces for minor league relievers than putting the ballclub together again. But who could burn with disdain after 2015 and 2016, which — following 2009 and its statistical facsimiles — seemed so surprising in producing their bounties of joy?

You could, maybe, but I couldn’t. What came before cushioned the blow when the Mets took their great fall.

A time to build up, a time to break down
A time to dance, a time to mourn
A time to cast away stones
A time to gather stones together

The last time the 2017 New York Mets had something, if not much, going on was Sunday, the occasion of their 162nd game. It occurred in Philadelphia between 3:11 in the afternoon and 6:20 in the evening. The Phillies scored eleven runs. The Mets facilitated them generously.

Noah Syndergaard used the game as the platform for his second abbreviated rehab start. When Syndergaard partially tore his right lat muscle and inadvertently shredded the Mets’ chances to contend, there was some informed speculation that he’d be back in July, maybe a little before the All-Star break, maybe a little after it. I told somebody I figured we wouldn’t see him pitching until the beginning of August, yet as soon as I said it, I decided I was being wildly optimistic. Since when does a Met come back from injury only a little behind schedule?

Thor looked great for two innings against the last-place Phillies, just like he looked fine a week before versus the clinched & unconcerned Nationals. He threw hard and he didn’t grab any section of his anatomy in agony. It means he’s healthier than he was during the heart of 2017, which is an encouraging sign for 2018. But 2018 is a light year away.

The rest of the starting lineup for the last game of the old year was young enough to make Syndergaard look like a hardened veteran. Actually, Syndergaard was pretty much the hardened veteran of the group. Nobody among his eight fielders had played a game as a Met before 2016. Save for stopgap right fielder Nori Aoki, none of them had played a game in the major leagues before 2016. It was a feast of potential when viewed through the prism of playing the youngsters en masse and seeing what we’ve got.

The Phillies, however, did all the feasting, stomping the Mets on their way out of town, 11-0 (on a Sunday, natch). Once Noah threw his preapproved 26 pitches, no Met looked particularly ready for prime time. Amed Rosario took an ohfer and saw his batting average dip below .250. Dominic Smith appeared baffled by the niceties of first base and watched his average slide beneath .200. And they’re the hot prospects.

Just one game, probably the most insignificant game they or their teammates will ever play in (the good lord willing). Still, not the note anybody wants to say goodbye to a season on. Or, perhaps, exactly the note on which this season deserved to be bid good riddance.

A time of love, a time of hate
A time of war, a time of peace
A time you may embrace
A time to refrain from embracing

Full circle? Well, no. The 2011 Mets were trying to put their best foot forward on Opening Night at Sun Life Stadium, a.k.a. every other random combination of sponsored words scattered about South Florida. Three of those Mets tasked with taking on the Marlins were the still extant core of the Shea’s last division champions from five years before. Two others were former first-round draft choices in whom a decent quantity of hope remained invested. Yet another had enjoyed a breakout season the season before.

Admit it, though. The name that jumps out at you from the first batch is Brad Emaus. Terry Collins may have had some residual talent from the 2006 Mets at his disposal along with a few pieces he could picture building on, but to begin his new assignment, the type he’d been craving a shot at for more than a decade, he’d had bestowed on him as a welcome-to-the-neighborhood gift a Rule 5 second baseman who’d never played in the majors before April 1, 2011, and wouldn’t play in the majors after April 17, 2011.

Here ya go, Terry. Knock yourself out.

Carlos Beltran was never going to finish 2011 as a Met. He was traded in late July. Ike Davis didn’t finish 2011. He tripped on the Coors Field mound in May and, metaphorically speaking, never really got up. Jose Reyes gave Terry a heckuva season, winning the NL batting title, and then made the snappiest exit imaginable. Angel Pagan didn’t live up to his 2010. Mike Pelfrey barely saw 2012. Josh Thole wasn’t a long-term answer. Willie Harris was Nori Aoki. David Wright was David Wright for as long as he could be, though not that much in 2011.

Collins kept molding lineups from rosters that were, for the most part, more Emaus than Wright, more au revoir than arrival, less able than cost-effective. The records crafted on his watch were not impressive. 77-85. 74-88. 74-88 again. 79-83. He managed those teams. Those are his records, too. Thing is, if you watched those Mets from 2011 through 2014, you knew for damn sure that those could have been, maybe should have been tangibly worse.

The manager was eventually given some keepers. He and his coaches did some cultivating, some strategizing, some tacticianing, even. Terry never seemed willing to yield ground to circumstances. The bit where the Mets are decimated by injuries didn’t pause in 2009 and resume in 2017. It was a chronic pain that inflicted the organization more years than not. Lineups had to be constructed from whole Emaus (or its generic equivalent) in the middle of 2015. Eric Campbell. John Mayberry, Jr. Darrell Ceciliani. And so forth. Lots of so forth.

Terry’s team held the fort. Then the fort was fortified, and before we could blink, the perpetually lousy Mets were the first-place Mets. After we blinked, they were division champions (90-72) for the first time in nine years, winning two playoff series and a pennant. Terry Collins was a World Series manager.

For an encore, he had to stitch together another team from ragged material, with almost everybody of import hurt at one point or another during 2016 (somebody should really look into how that keeps happening). Yet when the Wild Cards were dealt, Terry Collins’s 87-75 Mets found themselves in hard-earned possession of one. Two years, two Octobers.

Then came 2017 and its rapid descent to 70-92, which also goes on Collins’s record. More losses than wins overall, even if prior to 2015 there weren’t as many losses as could be expected. Overall, across seven seasons, it qualified as a Larry David kind of performance. Pretty, pretty good.

Published reports indicated some combination of Jeff Wilpon, Sandy Alderson and a host of unnamed sources curbed their enthusiasm for Terry Collins. There was no doubt the 162nd game of 2017, coinciding with the expiration of his contract, would be his last as Mets manager. It would have been sweet had his team produced a goodbye bang as loud as those the “POP!” sound those champagne corks made a year and two earlier.

A season of this nature, along with his stewardship, was destined to end with a whimper.

TC’s final lineup did not represent a best foot forward, but it was the 162nd game, a time to play the kids (an impulse Terry managed to control consistently during September). Still, Collins could be forgiven Brad Emaus flashbacks. The starting nine together had accumulated 61 career major league home runs entering Sunday’s action, or two more than Giancarlo Stanton hit this season. Aoki had 33 of them, all in other uniforms. Smith had nine. Syndergaard had four.

The kiddie corps didn’t save Collins’s job, but the Mets saved corporate face and preserved their manager’s dignity, announcing officially after the game that Terry will stay in the organization in some vague front office capacity. This is a victory for decorum and a triumph over business as usual. Throwing managers overboard and under buses is Met reflex. Stengel was granted a VP title following his 1965 retirement. Interim skippers Roy McMillan, Frank Howard and Mike Cubbage returned to coaching duty. Everybody else who lived to tell of having been a Mets manager was told to take a hike.

Terry, in the end, wasn’t. It wasn’t smooth, and the details on what his forthcoming role entails are vague, but the man who managed the Mets to the postseason twice and a league championship once managed the most Amazin’ feat of all: he managed not to be kicked to the curb.

A time to gain, a time to lose
A time to rend, a time to sew
A time for love…

After Gavin Cecchini made the last out of the Terry Collins era and 2017 got itself put in the books, SNY’s cameras lingered for a while on the Mets dugout. One of the players who was in no rush to leave was Reyes. Reyes 2.0. Not the Reyes who didn’t want one more minute on the field on September 28, 2011, lest his .337 batting average (and accompanying free agent value) encounter danger, but Reyes in a warmup jacket, sitting in deference to Cecchini and the almost all-young’n lineup. Jose batted .246 in 2017. Six years older than he was when he won the batting title, he didn’t appear itching to get going.

Neither did Asdrubal Cabrera, who, like Reyes, constituted what little fiber there was to this team on a daily basis once everybody else of tenure was traded or waived. You could take issue with Collins choosing to play Reyes instead of Cecchini as much as he did in the final weeks, or wonder why he leaned on Cabrera instead of testing Phil Evans a little more, but you had to admire the veteran remnants of the 2016 playoff drive for keeping it coming. I certainly did. On Saturday night, Cabrera hit the game-winning home run and thus wore the crown and robe the 2017 Mets awarded to their player of the game. They only gave them out when they won, so after a while hardly anybody wore them. I was impressed the Mets bothered to pack the silly clubhouse accoutrement for this last trip. I was more impressed they had cause to unpack it.

Reyes. Cabrera. First base coach Tom Goodwin. The cameras caught them hanging around chatting with each other, probably for the last time they’ll do that dressed as Mets together. And I caught myself hanging around to watch them hanging around. It’s something I’m skilled at.

There’s what’s come before. There’s what’s going on. And there’s what will come next. I’m great at the first part. I’m all right at the second. The third? Cripes, as Terry Collins liked to say when he managed the Mets for seven years, I haven’t the faintest idea.

But boy do I look forward to what will come next. I don’t mean that in the how many days to Pitchers & Catchers and has anyone seen the revised MLB Pipeline rankings? sense as much as I mean it in the immediate hey, the pregame show will be on pretty soon! sense. Looking forward to what was coming next was my favorite reflex of the 2017 season. With rare exception, I actually actively anticipated most every game the Mets played this year.

These Mets. This year.

I knew we weren’t in it and I knew we weren’t going to get back in it, but I didn’t care that much. There was going to be a Mets game. There were going to be Mets playing baseball and me watching and listening and noticing and considering all that was going on in the scope of what had come before. And I got to do it practically every day or night for six months. Not had to, but got to.

More often than not, the games themselves wound up dissatisfying. But more often than not, the whole thing culminated in me being here with you. That was extremely satisfying. I really looked forward to that. So thank you for another season of being a part of my season. And thank you in advance for whatever will come next as we turn, turn, turn the page toward 2018.

14 comments to There Was A Season

Thank goodness this season is over. (Except for: Go Twins. Go Twins. Go Twins. You lot gotta win at least one more game!) And you gotta leave one thing to the 2017 Mets; they stayed consistent to the end. Their Sunday games were never anything else than a snuff movie.

Daniel is sad to see Terry dumped. He’s the only Mets manager I’ve ever known. (panicked) How are we supposed to move on now??

I really hope they dump Cabrera and Reyes into a landfill somewhere and let the kids play from Opening Day in 2018. They’re likely going to lose another 90 anyway, especially with more than half of the assumed-sterling rotation from Opening Day (which Matzie already never made) being reduced to the question of not whether they should be put out of their misery, but what would be the most humane way to do so…

Dark days, months, years ahead.

Go Twins. Go Twins. If you win one more, I promise I’m on your bandwagon throughout the playoffs. Go Twins. Please. Go Twins.

There are plenty of things in life I enjoy, but when it comes to sports, the next best thing to a Mets win is any Mets game, and I’m sad that I have to wait months before I see any.

My hat is off to Terry Collins. He was brought in to babysit, was given, well, Brad Emaus, wound up taking us all to the World Series, stayed longer than Saint Gil, than Davey, than Yogi or Bobby V or anyone else. A stand up guy, an old school baseball guy in a world that only seems to want new school baseball guys, and sadly, mistreated by some on his way out the door. Be interesting to see who’s brought in to replace him, but for me, I suspect something will be missing.

Sigh…We just read that entire passage from Ecclesiastes during the Yizkor service on Saturday….appropriate for the Mets and appropriate for life.

The older I get (and I’ll be 60 on the day of the second game of the 2018 season) the more I simply love the Mets for whoever they are at the time -whether Amazin’ or Disappointin’ or simply Maddenin’. They are my personal harbinger of spring; I simply like driving around or puttering in the kitchen with Howie and Josh or tucked into my easy chair with my husband and our dog Mac and GKR; or (increasingly less frequently as it gets harder and harder to plan these trips from Albany) in person in Queens. Lately I’ve been looking for the Mets earlier and earlier in the year; last year I was thrilled to hear Gary on the radio calling March Madness of all things. I knew that voice!

I came of age during the Mets’ most joyous Time to Live, in 1969, and I think it’s permanently affected my outlook on life. There is always a season of rebirth coming, often when we least expect it – 1973, 2015, 1999 etc. During the other times,I’m just glad there are Mets at all. In an age when so much is uncertain or downright scary, the Mets are a constant presence at least six months of the year. Spring always follows the winter; the Time to Dance always follows the Time to Mourn. Let’s Go Mets…wherever we are going.

If you’re going to do a Larry David comparison, consider this clip to end the season. Dominic Smith yelling “you got it” to Jose Reyes, Terry doing the mother of all face palms, and Susie Essman as Jeff Wilpon inviting Terry to leave the building in a most colorful fashion.

Thanks to you both for another great year in writing. One thing is for sure, readers of this blog know that we win the world series of unofficial baseball team blogging year in and year out. You guys really are the best.

Greg–Perfect article for today–as Sunday’s debacle was a fitting end to the Mets 2017 train wreck.
Thanks to you & Jason for making me smile and adding to
my trip with our Mets-starting in 1963 @ Polo Grounds.

Thanks/Kudos to SkillSets
A little song
A little dance
A little seltzer
Down your pants.

The stark contrast between Syndergaard’s rehab stint and Flexen’s pick-me-up highlights the simple coin flip for the current version of the Mets. If the Mets staff of aces and ace closer (who looks close to his prime self again) are working, with capable set-up men like Reed and Blevins bridging the gap, the team is a contender. If the Mets ratio of pitching is weighted too much with the likes of Flexen versus the likes of Syndergaard, instead, the team cannot be a contender. The significance of front office and managerial decisions and performance of the rest of the roster is weighed in the frame set by the coin flip of the pitchers.

If the Mets staff of aces has crashed for good, then this version of the Mets is lost, even should the position players round into form.

I miss Mets baseball already, though I also look forward to dialing the W-L record back to 0-0. Play-off baseball in general is the good stuff for a sports fan, but there’s a big difference between play-off baseball and Mets play-off baseball.

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